Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #306

Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)The Science and Environmental Policy Project

THIS WEEK: By Ken Haapala, President

Bureaucratic Science: TWTW has used the term bureaucratic science, which may have confused some of its readers. Bureaucratic science occurs when a government entity, or a similar organization, charged with applying the best science possible, drifts from its purpose and institutes policies and procedures (methodology) that are inconsistent with its mission. The brightest, most competent and conscientious people may be involved. Education level does not matter. Bureaucratic science can be considered a subset of Group Think, ably discussed by Christopher Booker, presented in last week’s TWTW.

The investigation into the Challenger space shuttle disaster unveiled how bureaucratic science slowly replaced NASA’s principal mission of human safety in space exploration. The following discussion is based largely on the observations by Nobel Laurate Richard Feynman, who served on the Rogers Commission investigating the disaster, and “The Challenger Accident,” a chapter in a NASA publication on the history of the Marshall Space Flight Center.

The discussion of the 25th Shuttle mission by NASA’s Kennedy Space Flight Center on its web site goes through the launch sequence on January 28, 1986, and is based on the film recording of the event. It states that after 37 seconds the Challenger encountered several high-altitude wind shear conditions. “The wind shear created forces on the vehicle with relatively large fluctuations.” At 59 seconds a small flame appeared on one of the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB) which breeched the external tank containing liquid fuel, subsequently resulting in the explosion. The discussion concludes with:

“The Explosion [sic] 73 seconds after liftoff claimed crew and vehicle. Cause of explosion was determined to be an O-ring failure in right SRB. Cold weather was a contributing factor.”

Unfortunately, this conclusion ignores the bureaucratic science involved in the launch and NASA’s ignoring significant problems in the design of the joints in the Solid Rocket Motor (SRM), which are discussed in the sources mentioned above.

The solid rocket motor (SRM) of the Shuttle was made of several segments and had joints when assembled. This design required joints and seals to prevent leaks of the high temperature, high-pressure propulsion gases. The model used in the design was the well tested and highly successful Titan III intercontinental ballistic missile. However, the SRM was much larger and was designed to be reused after being refurbished. The differences in the design of the joints between the Titan III and the SRM were significant.

Ideally, when the rocket sections are assembled the result is a cylinder with a straight-line axis through the center. When the rocket is launched the cylinder and the straight-line axis should be maintained. If a straight line is not maintained, the joint is said to rotate. As a fail-safe precaution against leakage of high pressure gases in the case of joint rotation, two O-rings, (mentioned in the quote above) were used in the joints to seal them.

As Feynman demonstrated convincingly during a hearing of the Rogers Commission investigation, the O-ring material lost elasticity, resilience, when chilled by ice water. Cold weather was a contributing factor to the explosion, but not the primary cause. The primary cause was a design flaw that allowed the rotation of the joint, moving the rocket section slightly off-center, which, in turn, necessitated that the O-rings function properly. The O-rings failed when cold. However, the O-ring failure covered the design flaw.

As both Feynman and the authors of “The Challenger Accident” state, the designed flaw was revealed early in testing. The O-rings had significant erosion during both cold weather and warm weather tests. If the joints were designed properly, erosion of O-rings should not occur. The contractor performed various patches such as applying different types of putty to the joints to reduce the erosion, but the safety issue remained. As Feynman wrote:

“…The O-rings of the Solid Rocket Boosters were not designed to erode. Erosion was a clue that something was wrong. Erosion was not something from which safety can be inferred.

“There was no way, without full understanding, that one could have confidence that conditions the next time might not produce erosion three times more severe than the time before. Nevertheless, officials fooled themselves into thinking they had such understanding and confidence, in spite of the peculiar variations from case to case. A mathematical model was made to calculate erosion. This was a model based not on physical understanding but on empirical curve fitting.”

As missions continued with partial damage to critical components, but without drastic failure, the management of Marshall Space Flight Center became more self-assured as to the safety of the Shuttle. A sense of conformity, Bureaucratic Science, set in with O-ring erosion considered normal.

[Marshall project manager]“Mulloy, in testimony to a Senate committee, best summarized the circumstances. ‘We at NASA,‘ he said, ‘got into a group-think about this problem. We saw it, we recognized it, we tested it, and we concluded it was an acceptable risk. … When we started down that road we were on the road to an accident. ‘[footnote 126] Indeed the teleconference was a classic case of ‘groupthink, ‘a form of decision making in which group cohesion overrides serious examination of alternatives. Top level Marshall and Thiokol officials, believing the joint was safe, rationalized bad news from experts, and refused to consider contingency plans. Recognizing consensus among superiors, some subordinate engineers exercised self-censorship. Consequently, participants in the teleconference failed to communicate and find useful ways to analyze the risks of cold temperature. [footnote 127] Two personnel experts, who conducted management seminars at NASA from 1978 to 1982, argued that groupthink was not unique to Marshall and was inherent in NASA culture. They believed that internal career ladders, homogeneous professional backgrounds, masculine management styles, political pressures to downplay problems, and over-confidence resulting from a history of success had produced a quest for harmony that was often dysfunctional.” [footnote 128] p.377 [Boldface added]

In this instance, NASA’ s Bureaucratic Science, group think, led to failure in NASA’s mission and death.

As Feynman wrote in the introduction of his paper:

“It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management. What are the causes and consequences of this lack of agreement? Since 1 part in 100,000 would imply that one could put a Shuttle up each day for 300 years expecting to lose only one, we could properly ask ‘What is the cause of management’s fantastic faith in the machinery?’”

One can ask the same question about the research and government reports based on defective global climate models. ‘What is the cause of management’s fantastic faith in the models?’

As discussed in last week’s TWTW, repeatedly, John Christy has shown serious design flaws in virtually all the global climate models demonstrating their failure to properly estimate atmospheric temperatures, where the greenhouse gas effect occurs. The failure of the climate establishment to recognize its failing efforts will be discussed more fully in the next TWTW.

Quote of the Week. For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over

public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. – Richard Feynman

Number of the Week:750,000 pairs

Good Climate News: Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins discusses Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) to carbon dioxide (CO2) and an article appearing in the journal Nature stating that the standard estimate of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may be too high. Jenkins notes that the standard estimate was developed by the National Academy of Science, National Research Council in 1979. [ECS is the amount of warming occurring with a doubling of CO2, once equilibrium is obtained. An important question is: was the globe ever in equilibrium?]

“This 40-year lack of progress is no less embarrassing for being thoroughly unreported in the mainstream press. The journal Nature, where the new study appears, frankly refers to an ‘intractable problem.’ In an accompanying commentary, a climate scientist says the issue remains ‘stubbornly uncertain.‘” [Boldface added.]

Of course, the uncertainty is not expressed by the IPCC or the US Global Change Research Project (USGCRP). Jenkins asserts that the new study may be part of a trend. But, the new study is based on measurements of surface temperatures, a design flaw for estimating the effect of CO2 on temperatures. The globe is over 70% water, and no one has demonstrated a credible theory on how the greenhouse effect occurs in the oceans.

In the electronic version of the article, Haapala added the comment: The greenhouse effect occurs in the atmosphere, where the greenhouse gases are. Yet, the IPCC and most climate scientists are trying to estimate the greenhouse effect using surface temperature data, which are influenced by many other human activities, such as urbanization, farming, irrigation, etc. Repeatedly, John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville has testified to the House Science Committee that the average of the climate models used by the IPCC, and others, overestimates the warming in the atmosphere by 2.5 to 3 times. No wonder these scientists have an “intractable problem.” They are looking in the wrong place for an answer. See Article # 1.

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Spencer’s New Model: As discussed in the last TWTW, Roy Spencer posted his new one-dimensional model using surface temperature data (ocean data to a depth of 2,000 meters). This seemed strange since Spencer is the co-discoverer of the method of calculating temperatures from satellite data. His model showed an Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) of 1.54 C, at the very low end of what the IPCC publishes. This week he plays further with the model. Then he reveals his purpose:

“Of course, this whole exercise assumes that, without humans, the climate system would have had no temperature trend between 1765-2100. That is basically the IPCC assumption — that the climate system is in long-term energy equilibrium, not only at the top-of atmosphere, but in terms of changes in ocean vertical circulation which can warm the surface and atmosphere without any TOA radiative forcing.

“I don’t really believe the ‘climate stasis’ assumption, because I believe the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were real, and that some portion of recent warming has been natural. In that case, the model climate sensitivity would be lower, and the model warming by 2100 would be even less.”

Spencer is exposing a false assumption of the IPCC: without human intervention there would be little or no change to the enormously complex climate system. See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.

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Russian Influence: Students of propaganda may be amused and / or bored with the efforts to tie the Trump Administration to Russian efforts to influence the recent election. Russians have attempted to influence US elections since the 1930s, and the US has tried to influence elections in other countries before that. Now we are seeing reports covering attempts by Russians to influence decisions on pipelines, hydraulic fracturing, genetically modified organisms (foods), etc.

This is not particularly surprising, because the US has long been a major exporter of agriculture products and is becoming a major player in the international markets for oil and natural gas. Russia’s government is heavily dependent on oil and gas production. US production is causing OPEC and Russia to cut back on production, severely damaging the ability of these governments to meet their budgets. One can call the propaganda a symptom of a trade war. See links under The Political Games Continue

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Very, very scary – The Cube is Coming? No doubt to alert oil producers in Canada, the Financial Post had an amusing headline on an article discussing the possibility of a new form of oil and gas extraction in the Permian shale basin in West Texas. The basin has multiple layers of hydrocarbon producing rock interspaced with impervious rock. Multiple horizontal wells, drilled into different formations, at different levels may be a cost effective way to develop in this basin. As compared with traditional methods, the surface infrastructure costs can be kept down while production increased. Will Russian media interests play up the threat? See link under Oil and Natural Gas – the Future or the Past?

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Number of the Week: 750,000 pairs. Traces of guano stains seen in NASA satellite imagery led to the discovery of over 1.5 million, over 750,000 pairs, of Adélie penguins in the Danger Islands of Antarctica where they were not known to exist. Of course, some people claimed that a decline in penguins was being caused by global warming / climate change. Strange, how people will go to the ends of the earth to discover a colony of birds showing up in satellite imagery, yet ignore temperatures calculated from satellite data, which show a general cooling over Antarctica.

“Given the above findings, it would appear that freshwater phytoplankton, contrary to conventional wisdom, are presently carbon-limited (at least for this lake setting) and will likely benefit from so-called freshwater acidification by enhancing their NPP as atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to rise in the years and decades ahead.”

“Thus, it would seem that if cities are truly analogs for the future temperature and CO2 concentration of the planet, earth’s trees will greatly benefit from their respective increases in terms of growth.”

“Probably the most pertinent observation, however, is that neither the north or south reconstruction of the ETP show unusual, unnatural or unprecedented moisture conditions over the most recent century, during which time the CO2 content of the atmosphere rose by more than 40 percent. Despite this increase, there appears to be no discernible impact on drought or flood, which climatic features presently remain well within the bounds of their multi-century records.”

Comment from physicist Don Rapp: “Urban heat islands have been studied for many years and it is very well known that cities store solar energy and generated energy and release this energy typically at night, while at all times cities remain warmer than their surroundings.

“Two consequences of this are:

“(1) As global warming proceeds, we see the warming much more as an increase in lows, than as an increase in highs. This is more true in cities, but seems to be widespread.

“(2) The urban measurement stations as part of the global network to monitor climate show exaggerated warming compared to the past. In addition, the many stations that were suburban or exurban when they were first installed, have now become urban as cities expanded outward, and due to this effect, show even more exaggerated warming compared to the past. These measurements do not reflect global warming due to greenhouse gases, but rather, they are local hotspots that skew the global climate measurement system into suggesting global warming is greater than it actually is.”

Changing Climate

African rainforests vanished for 600 years, then bounced back—why?

A new study argues humans caused a rainforest crisis, but not everyone’s convinced.

[SEPP Comment: One could add to the essay: if Henry Shreve had not accomplished the cut-off of Turnbull’s Bend of the Mississippi in 1831 and later the Corps of Engineers had not prevented cuts in the Mississippi banks from expanding into Atchafalaya River, the main flow of the Mississippi would be going into the Atchafalaya, bypassing Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Later the Corps of Engineers prevented a direct cut into Lake Pontchartrain, to protect shipping to New Orleans. Without these engineering efforts, Louisiana would be dramatically different in shape and in wetlands accumulation.]

“The physicists Freeman Dyson and Fred Singer, who would end up on the opposite side of the global-warming debate from Schneider and [Russell] Seitz, calculated that any effects would be patchy and short-lived, and that while dry soot could generate cooling, any kind of dampness risked turning a nuclear smog into a warming factor and a short-lived one at that.”

House panel: Russia aimed to disrupt US energy markets using social media

[SEPP Comment: The judge ruled the cases are more appropriate in federal court. He wrote: “[t]he scope of the worldwide predicament demands the most comprehensive view available, which in our American court system means our federal courts and our federal common law … A patchwork of 50 different answers to the same fundamental global issue would be unworkable.”]

“Already this year, the balance of electricity production will be 71% natural gas, 25%-27% coal, and 2% renewable energy, with the economy transitioning to using coal only for emergency and backup purposes by 2030.”

[SEPP Comment: According to Index Mundi (from EIA data), Israel produced zero (0) tons of coal for many years and little oil, 400 Barrels of crude oil per day from 2011 to 2013 (last year of full data). Meaningful production of dry natural gas started in 2004.]

“Ignacio Galán, the chief executive of Spanish utility Iberdrola, said that new non-industrial entrants with little experience were making overly aggressive bids on contracts to build renewable energy, thinking it was a financial ‘el Dorado’”.

Carbon Schemes

Bosses at world’s most ambitious CCS plant kept problems secret for years

“The large blue butterfly went extinct in the UK in 1979 despite a prolonged campaign by conservationists to try and save the species.

“Prof Jeremy Thomas, head of ecology at Oxford University, said it is only now that the climate is warming and suitable spots have been discovered in the Cotswolds that the species is able to start spreading across Britain once again.”

“Tawny owls turn brown to survive in warmer climates, according to scientists in Finland. Feather colour is hereditary, with grey plumage dominant over brown. But the study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that the number of brown owls was increasing. As winters become milder, the scientists say, grey feathered tawny owls are likely to disappear.

“This study indicates that the birds are evolving in response to climate change. Climate-driven selection has led to an evolutionary change in the population. Dr Patrik Karell from the University of Helsinki, who led the study, gathered together data from long-term tawny owl studies carried out across Finland over the last 30 years.”

SUMMARY: The article is discussed in the This Week Section above. The author concludes with:

“Leaving climate sensitivity uncertainties out of the narrative certainly distorts the reporting that follows. Take a widely cited IPCC estimate that “with 95% certainty,” humans are responsible for at least half the warming observed between 1951 and 2010.

“This sounds empirical and is reported as such. In fact, such estimates are merely derivative of how much warming should have taken place if the standard climate sensitivity estimate is correct. Imagine predicting an 8 before letting the dice fly, then assuming an 8 must have come up because that’s what your model predicted.

“To be clear, the U.S. and other governments have done increasingly minute and exacting work in cataloging actual climate and weather patterns. We argue here they have grossly underperformed in sorting out cause and effect. And since the press’s job is to hold institutions accountable, the output of government climate science is so poor partly because of the abysmally bad job done by reporters on the climate beat.

“No better example exists than their gullibility in the face of U.S. government press releases pronouncing the latest year the “warmest on record.” Scroll down and the margin of error cited in the government’s own press release would lead you rightly to suspect that a clear trend is actually hard to find in recent decades despite a prodigious increase in CO2 output.

“Well, guess what? Taking account of the actual temperature record and its tiny variations is exactly what the Exeter group and others have been doing in order to make progress on the 40-year problem of climate sensitivity. And they are finding less risk of a catastrophic outcome than previously thought.

“A German court on Tuesday rang the death knell for certain diesel cars in a blow to the country’s flagship auto industry, which could now be forced to spend billions to upgrade or replace millions of cars.

“In a landmark decision, a federal court ruled that German cities Stuttgart and Düsseldorf could ban diesel vehicles from their streets as a way to reduce pollution, rejecting an appeal of a lower-court ruling. Ultimately, the ruling clears the way for any German city to ban older diesel vehicles and could inspire similar measures in cities around Europe, analysts said.

“The closely watched ruling on Tuesday by the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig is likely to accelerate the demise of a technology that German auto makers have long promoted as combining solid driving performance with fuel economy and low greenhouse-gas emissions, but which has been largely been [sic] discredited in the wake of the emissions-cheating scandals at Volkswagen and other car makers.

After discussing assumed health effects and presenting current differences in re-sale values of diesel vs. gasoline vehicles, the author states:

Diesel vehicles in Germany certified between 2009 and 2014 under the so-called Euro 5 emissions standard, numbering about 5.9 million vehicles, wouldn’t be subject to a ban until September 2019, the Leipzig court ruled. Vehicles certified later under the Euro 6 regime would likely be exempt from any bans.

But all other diesels in the country certified before 2009, nearly 7 million vehicles in operation today, could be subject to bans at any time. Those individuals hit hardest will be owners of the oldest diesels on the road that don’t adhere to Euro 6. That segment accounts for 2.7 million of the 15 million diesels in use, according to the German Automotive Industry Association.

The author concludes with efforts of various municipal governments to ban diesels, and local and business issues.

10 thoughts on “Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #306”

E.F.D. Koerner in “Linguistics and Revolution,” p.12 quotes James McCawley:
I maintain that government subsidization of research and education, regardless of how benevolently and fairly it is administered, increases the likelihood of scientific revolutions for the worse, since it makes it possible for a subcommunity to increase its membership drastically without demonstrating that its intellectual credit so war-rants. The kind of development that I have in mind is illustrated by the rapid growth of American universities during the late 1950s and 1960s, stimulated by massive spending by the federal government. This spending made is possible for many uni-versities to start linguistics programs that otherwise would not have been started or would not have been started so early, or to expand existing programs much further than they would otherwise have been expanded. Given the situation of the early 1960s, it was inevitable that a large proportion of the new teaching jobs in linguistics would go to transformational grammarians. In the case of new programs, since at that time transformational grammar was the kind of linguistics in which it was most obvious that new and interesting things were going on, many administrators would prefer to get a transformational grammarian to organize the new program; in the case of expansion of existing programs, even when those who had charge of the new funds would not speculate their personal intellectual capital on the new theory, it was to their advantage to speculate their newfound monetary capital on it, since if the new theory was going to become influential, a department would have to offer instruction in it if the department was to attract students in numbers that were in keeping with its newfound riches. And with the first couple of bunches of students turned out by the holders of these new jobs, the membership of the transformational subcommunity swelled greatly. (McCawley 1976b: 25)http://uahost.uantwerpen.be/apil/apil106/EFKKoerner.pdf

“I don’t really believe the ‘climate stasis’ assumption, because I believe the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were real,
=========
a river meanders. why would climate not do something similar? why expect temperature to follow. a straight line?
answer: because a straight line is easy to predict. a meander is not. predictable.
telling a lie with a straight face is a requirement for success in all large organizations.

A bit of a pitpick on the Titan III.
As far as I know, the Titan III was developed as a launcher (booster) and not an ICBM, with the first intended application being the Dyna-Soar (X-20). The configuration with the two strap-on SRM’s is far from ideal for launching from a silo.

‘Model simulations of many climate phenomena remain highly uncertain despite scientific advances and huge amounts of data. Scientists must do more to tackle model uncertainty head-on.’
Why?
‘We argue that the huge and successful effort to develop physical understanding of the Earth system needs to be complemented by greater effort to understand and reduce model uncertainty. Without such reductions in uncertainty, the science we do will not, by itself, be sufficient to provide robust information for governments, policy makers, and the public at large.’
What would they need ‘robust information’ for?
The underlying assumption is that there is a PROBLEM.
There isn’t. Climate science is esoterica. It is interesting and should be studied, but it has no relevance to most people.
The answer isn’t for ‘climate science’ to do a better job; the answer is for ‘climate science’ to stop making predictions, especially dire ones. They are running even with Harold Camping to date.

“Walk toward the fire, don’t care about what they call you….”
You keep on a talkin’, I’ll keep on a walkin’.
My collection of five papers on WriterBeat has accumulated over 10,000 views and zero substantive rebuttals, a noteworthy milestone. Here’s an abstract/summary.
What doesn’t work and why:
Feynman observed that if experiment and observation don’t support your theory, the theory is wrong.
1) 288 K – 255 K = 33 C warmer with an atmosphere than without is nonsense.
2) Upwelling/downwelling/”back” radiation warming the surface is thermodynamic rubbish.
3) The radiative greenhouse effect is as incorrect as phlogiston, luminiferous ether and cold fusion.
After analyzing numerous USCRN data sets, i.e. SOLRAD, AIR and SOIL temperatures for several US locations, I have the following general observations. As the earth rotates below the sun both AIR (1.5 m) and SOIL (5, 10, 20 cm) temperatures increase swiftly and close together. As the sun sets the AIR cools rapidly because of its low thermal mass and becomes cooler than the SOIL. The SOIL, because of its high thermal mass, cools slowly and becomes and remains warmer than the AIR throughout the night until rotating once more into the sun light. I could find no evidence in the physical data that the AIR ever warms the SOIL to any significant degree. I also could find no evidence that the SOIL loses heat rapidly because of the 396 W/m^2 upwelling LWIR. These observations of actual physical evidence contradict RGHE theory.
What does work and why:
The earth’s albedo, which exists because of the atmosphere, reflects away 30% of the incoming irradiation COOLING the earth same as that shiny reflective cardboard panel placed behind a car’s windshield.
The earth’s albedo without an atmosphere would be similar to the moon’s, 0.12. The amount of energy hitting bare regplith would increase by 21%, blazing hot on the lit half and bitter cold on the dark.
The atmospheric blanket of molecules out to 32 km creates a thermal gradient between the surface and ToA (32 km) same as the insulated walls of a house per the equation Q = U A dT. Above 32 km and no molecules energy can only radiate into space.
The energy that leaves must equal the energy that enters to maintain any given temperature. If the albedo reflects away more energy, the atmosphere cools. If the albedo reflects away less energy, the atmosphere warms.
Because of the elliptical orbit, Q at perihelion is 1,415 W/m^2 warmer and at aphelion is 1,323 W/m^2 cooler, a range of 92 W/m^2 or +/- 3%. If Q ranges +/- 3% and dT = 100 C that would be a +/- 3 C variation – just because of the elliptical orbit.
Because of the tilted axis, the irradiation at any given point on ToA fluctuates 700 W/m^2 from which comes summer and winter. If dT = 100 C that fluctuation would create a 13 C range from summer to winter.https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6369927560008212481
The relative influence of the GHGs that constitute 0.04% of the atmosphere is essentially zero.
Now, you can defend RGHE and the three points I dispute above by explaining how they actually really work.
Or
You can explain where my theory is in error e.g. I used an equation for an over-thruster instead of a flux capacitor.
However,
Simply saying I’m wrong, unqualified, not a “climate” scientist, not “peer” reviewed, outside the 100-year consensus or various epithets, denier, trouble maker, anti-science, assorted other excuses to dodge the science, etc. ain’t gonna cut it.

“The earth’s albedo, which exists because of the atmosphere, reflects away 30% of the incoming irradiation COOLING the earth same as that shiny reflective cardboard panel placed behind a car’s windshield.”
Cooling???
It prevents heating. But there is no magic.

Is preventing heating the same as cooling? Not really, so I concede your point.
However, the system operates at lower (cooler) temperatures with the albedo/atmosphere than without contrary to RGHE warmer theory.

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